


The Book of the Future

by ChatoyantPenumbra



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, Yu-Gi-Oh! Series
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet Ending, Bonds Beyond Time, Canon Universe, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dark Side of Dimensions, Dimension Travel, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Post-5D's, Post-Canon, Post-Dark Side Of Dimensions, Synchroshipping - Freeform, Time Travel, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's 10th Anniversary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 05:46:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14182167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChatoyantPenumbra/pseuds/ChatoyantPenumbra
Summary: The Book of the Future holds everything anyone could ever need to know about destiny for all people, but Yusei finds himself as one of the exclusions, feeling lost as he struggles to weigh the paths he could take alongside the pain of watching all of his friends leave Neo Domino. With no direction, what will Yusei decide for himself when it is his decision alone to make?





	The Book of the Future

**Author's Note:**

> A little something for the #5Ds_10th_Anniversary, since this is a series that I've been watching since it came out and fell absolutely head over heels in love with since the start. I wanted to write this in canon universe, right after the final episode 154. It broke my heart how lost Yusei seemed about his future after he finished Fortune and everyone left Neo Domino, and since I'm total synchroshipping trash I wanted to follow it with the events of Dark Side of Dimensions, since Atem is shown to be able to travel freely through time and dimension/world even without the Millennium Puzzle after he crosses to the Netherworld. The connection was obvious to me. Touches briefly on the offscreen kiss Aki and Yusei shared. 
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy!

The Book of the Future is written with countless passages, on dimensions of the one and all. Its pages shimmer with the glow of eternity, and constants and variables are the pulp that make up the paper, filled with both darkness and light, evil and good, with hate and love. It is without a will of its own, instead filled by the decisions of all of the living, all of the dead.

 

For Neo Domino, these pages have been written and rewritten and rewritten again. Entire chapters have been rearranged and phased to the rear, sentences have been erased, and possibilities upon possibilities have been made null by the actions of just a select few.

 

Fudo Yusei is one of these few.

 

Of all of the determinants which decide what the book contains, Yusei has the strongest pull, the ink of his existence seeping the most permanently into its ever-changing sheets, and his will having the might to rip out whole pages at a time to bend destiny to his own morals.

 

Many have opposed him.

 

All of them have lost.

 

Yusei stands in the center of the laboratory room, watching as the program he spent countless hours coding for the better part of a year runs with striking efficiency on the state-of-the-art computer before him. Moment will never again go out of control, and the world will never again have to suffer the fate of evil gods rising out of the Earth with the help of their Dark Signers, and Z-One and his associates will never return from the future to destroy the world as they know it.

 

With Fortune, Yusei will never meet Yuki Judai or Muto Yugi, or the spirit trapped within Yugi’s Millennium Puzzle, but he is not aware of that at the time of its making. He creates it to change the future for the better, and he accomplishes just that.

 

He watches the program run for hours perfectly; the seething worry of technology failing, or someone like Godwin Rutger with corrupted intentions and the ability to do the city he so desperately loves so much harm is ever at the back of his mind.

 

But he has prepared for that. The laboratory is under constant surveillance, and if a weakness is so much as detected in Fortune, Yusei has programmed notifications to be sent directly to him, accessible by every single device he owns.

 

Fortune is a massive main frame, bridging control of Moment with societal issues from standard of living to the accessibility of schools of kids from Satellite and other poor areas, and over the months he invests many more sleepless nights into perfecting every aspect he can, in constant communication with his colleagues working in all sectors of city and state governments, including the occasional message to his friends for updates on the social conditions of where they are, and for any advice they might impart.

 

Crow is a wanderer with the Ride Ace League, dueling whoever his heart so desires as he strengthens his deck along his journey, and though Aki is abroad, she still sees countless patients whose financial and physical health are exposed to her, so their feedback is usually the most useful. Ruka has also done her fair share of research and help, and Yusei can feel nothing but pride in watching the two twins like his own siblings grow into such passionate and intelligent young adults.

 

Crow, Aki, and the twins are really the only ones that ever contact him on a semi-regular basis, but he knows they are all busy with their own lives. Some days he finds himself yearning to hear Crow’s bold laugh and feel the light sting of his caring slap on the back. Others he remembers just how soft and warm Aki’s hands had been between his the last time he saw her in the garage of Poppo Time, when she had hesitated with words but not with actions to show just how she felt before leaving. Jack and Kiryu don’t ever reach out, but it’s to be expected.  

 

He misses everyone dearly, but he knows they have gone their separate ways with good reason, to follow their hearts. It still doesn’t hurt him any less.

 

Yusei remains lost. Following the duel with Jack, he decides not on whether to be a Duelist, or to continue serving as a scientist with his team. At this point, all of the adjustments he can make are already made, and his team is more than capable of taking care of the rest.

 

He feels, as a Chief, there is nothing more he can do to help Neo Domino.

 

Not only that, but even his mark has been taken back by the Crimson Dragon.

 

Where does the world need him?

 

The Book of the Future is vague where Yusei is concerned, naming no path he will take, no choices he will make. The weight of that decision, both a blessing and burden, sits fully on his shoulders.

 

But there is one person who has seen past every constant, past every variable, past every dimension. Unlike the Book, he is not without his own will; instead he is driven constantly by his own judgment and the path called Fate for over 3,000 years.

 

For him, the Book was written for as long as he lived and for as long as he was dead and bound to Yugi, his soul ensnared within the Puzzle. The Ceremonial Battle and crossing into the afterlife is the last page of his written destiny. Now it is blank, hazy, vague, just as Yusei’s.

 

They are both wayward, separate from the rest of the living world.

 

But he is not without purpose as he stands in Neo Domino City, looking up at the KaibaCorp building before him that caresses the skies with its tall touch. The afternoon is temperate, nothing like the hot summer heat of the Netherworld, and slowly the streets fill more with the sound of people as they leave their places of work, commuting back to their homes on high-speed roads and efficient public transit.

 

There is a bakery just across the square from the government tower that Yusei frequents before riding his D-Wheel back home, and along the way the two catch each other’s gazes, and the Chief hesitates. The face of the man before him first reminds him of Muto Yugi, the dueling legend he has only heard about in stories and read of in books and online articles. But something in the way the wind whispers against his ears, rustling his hair against his face—it calls that this is not that boy. It is like something he has forgotten, _just_ on the tip of his tongue but still impossibly out of reach. It frustrates him. His heart churns.

 

He can’t remember where he’s seen this man.

 

He settles on the name he knows isn’t correct.

 

“Muto Yugi?”

 

The other smiles knowingly, and something familiar gleams in his amethyst eyes. Yusei knows with everything inside of him that he’s seen it before. Bits and pieces of a sunset that both belong and don’t belong to this town graze his mind. It’s gone before he can grasp it.

 

He clenches his jaw. It’s unbearable.

 

“My name is Atem. I was with Yugi when you both met and dueled Paradox.” It doesn’t ring a bell, but the Pharaoh already knows that. “I wanted to thank you in my own words for helping to save Domino. And helping to save Yugi and his grandfather.”

 

The confusion swings at the back of Yusei’s mind like a metronome with an annoying tick. It’s as though someone has wound his head up with a key too tightly, and the pressure is taking far too long to decompress. He knows Atem isn’t referring to Neo Domino when he leaves out its prefix.

 

He still has half a mind that this is just a terrible coincidence, his brain exacting its revenge with delusions and hallucinations for not sleeping enough.

 

“But that was twenty years ago, are you sure you…”

 

In the square, the clock fixed to the pole strikes the hour, and it chimes with a sound Yusei has more than grown accustomed to distantly hearing while working up in his office in the skyscraper just behind him. But the sound hits him in the gut as it never has before, and he suddenly remembers a flash of another town square, with another street clock.

 

It too fades as quickly as a car goes by behind him, but he manages to cling to at least some of it before it disappears into the void.

 

His thumb grazes the edge of his Stardust Dragon card in his front pocket, and the sentence punches out of him before he has so much a chance to understand what he’s saying.

 

“You got my Stardust Dragon back.”

 

His eyes widen at last, and no one takes notice of them, stepping around as they continue on with their duties towards their next destinations. The city suddenly feels much different than it did before, and the haze of the way the days blend together is shoved back like an abrupt breeze has swept it into the distance.

 

Yusei can’t look away. He thinks he even sees the faint glow of gold lingering on Atem’s skin. The Pharaoh smiles wider. He knows he has exactly what he came for, as the light touches those sapphire eyes that are completely locked on him.

 

“So you remember.”

 

“No. _Why can’t I remember?_ ”

 

The Pharaoh holds out his hand, and the golden rings adorning his fingers and the Puzzle hanging around his neck by a brown leather rope stand out brilliantly against the simple black tank and jeans he wears.

 

Yusei glances down at the hand, and then back at Atem. He can’t figure out why he trusts him.

 

“Come, Yusei. Let me show you the horrid future that could have been, the one you saved your city and the future from with your work here.” The Pharaoh glances up at the building, at what KaibaCorp has become without Kaiba.

 

The Chief reaches to lay his hand in Atem’s, but before he does so, he hesitates, and a second comment leaves him unregulated.

 

“Was it really a better future if we never ended up meeting?”

 

The twinkle in Atem’s eyes changes, and the Pharaoh finds himself utterly speechless for just a beat before he can regain his composure. It is he who should have remembered: Yusei is full of surprises, no matter the dimension in which he resides.

 

His fingers twitch open just a fraction more, beckoning the former Signer, and his confident smile is one that shakes Yusei to the core of his being.

 

“Am I not here now?”

 

Their hands touch, and they both fade from sight in the square with a soft twinkle of gold, off to a distant dimension not so different, not so similar.

 

Then Yusei remembers.

 

 _He remembers_ **_everything._ **

 

The Book of the Future shimmers, its pages flipping open to where Yusei left off on his journey. Ink begins to seep slowly into the paper.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah and now Yusei remembers that you said you would duel him too so IT'S TIME TO DUEL/LET'S REV IT UP. 
> 
> Anyway please comment and let me know how you liked this!


End file.
